Blueberry and Banana Oaty Bites: Dairy Free, Egg Free, Soya Free, Vegan

In the eternal quest for bakes the whole family will enjoy, that meet the needs of my CMPA, egg allergic baby, I came across a recipe for a Banana, oat and chocolate munchy bar on Jenny Eatwell's Rhubarb and ginger. Whilst that recipe looked very tasty it’s near impossible to get dairy and soya free chocolate, and what you can get is too expensive to use in cake (Booja Booja, I’m looking at you). I thought I’d adapt the original recipe to suit our needs allergy wise and make it a bit more suitable for a weaning treat.

This is a fabulously easy recipe that you could easily change up to suit your family’s tastes. It's much like an oaty version of a banana bread or a cakey version of a flapjack - not unlike my Porridge fingers for big people.

Blueberry and Banana Oaty Bites: Dairy Free, Egg Free, Soya Free, Vegan

Serves 12 (or 24 if all being used for babies)

2¼ cups Porridge Oats

½ tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

½ tsp Baking powder

¼ tsp Salt (just a pinch if using Kosher or sea salt)

1 tsp sweet mixed spice

3 overripe Bananas

1 pot Apple puree (the type for Babies) or ¼ cup of cooked down Bramleys

2 tsp Vanilla extract

¼ cup Maple syrup

½ cup Blueberries

Grease a 9”x9” Brownie pan, and line with a long strip, the width of the tin, and 3 times the length

Preheat the oven to 160ºC

Blitz the oats in a food processor until they are rough flour

Pour into a mixing bowl, add the Bicarb, Baking powder, Salt and sweet mixed spice. Give a quick mix to combine the dry ingredients.

Break the bananas into chunks and pop into the food processor, add the Maple Syrup, fruit pot and Vanilla. Blitz until smooth.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, add the Blueberries, and stir to combine.

Pour this into the prepared tin, smooth out the top, and bake for 20 minutes at 160ºC (Check at 15 mins)

When the top is golden and the bake feels firm to the touch, remove and leave to cool in the tin.

When cool, use the strip of baking paper to easily remove from the tin.

Slice into bars, this makes 12.

Enjoy with a cup of Tea, or if you are little, half a bar with a sippy cup of Oat milk.

These freeze beautifully - I halve the bars, and much like I do for pancakes separate them with little square of greaseproof paper before popping in a freezer bag. Then it's just a case of defrosting at room temperature. 

Oaty Bars: The activity plan

	For reference, Guides are aged 10 – 14 Break the girls up into Patrols/ groups of 6-8
Oaty Bars
Equipment: Sturdy saucepan (biggish) Wooden spoon Scales Greaseproof paper Brownie tin/ cake tin/ roasting tin Sharp knife Grater Clean hands
Ingredients (per patrol): 65g butter (Sainsbury’s economy butter is the best and cheap) 75g light, soft brown sugar 65g crunchy peanut butter - a no sugar one if you can find it, I'm using a Whole Earth 35g of honey (or golden syrup) and 2 teaspoons to drizzle over at the end Zest of a lemon 100g porridge oats 75g of dried fruit 75g of mixed seeds This makes about 12 Energy bars, so ideal for a Patrol of 6-8 girls	If doing this with Guides it is an ideal Patrol cooking activity and links into the On Your Marks resource: Energy Boost (page 18) I would also count this towards clause 9 of the Cook badge as the girls need to chop the fruit, grate the zest of the lemons, use the cooker safely and cut up the oaty bars at the end. If you’ve not got digital scales – go with rough quantities. But if you’re rounding one up by 5g do the same all the way through to maintain ratios of ingredients Why not get the girls to taste and choose some different dried fruits – each patrol could make a different batch up
Instructions: Wash your hands Measure out the butter, sugar, peanut butter and honey and put into a big saucepan Grate the zest of the lemon into the pan too Melt these ingredients over a low heat, when they’re all combined, stir in the oats, dried fruit and seeds Press into either a greased and lined brownie pan (about 20cm square) or if you prefer flatter bars a roasting tin Cook at 160 degrees for 35-40 minutes Take out of the oven and leave in the tin to cool completely Using a sharp knife cut into squares or bars and store in an airtight tin for up to a week. These are ideal for a pre-camp cooking activity and will make a fantastic snack once you’ve pitched your tents! I checked on the prices on www.mysupermarket.com and Asda came out the cheapest, working out at £0.45 per head for a unit of 24 girls.	Safety notes: Please make sure that the girls are well supervised – especially when melting the ingredients. This recipe has huge allergy alerts – Peanuts and seeds, so please check your Joining forms/ Go reports for any allergens you need to be aware of. The peanut butter can be replaced by a couple of mashed up bananas. Alterations for Brownies/ younger Guides Weigh out the ingredients yourselves and put into little bowls Get the girls to put them in the pan, but let a leader melt them A sturdy pan is best, I didn’t bother about using a non stick one though Keep your heat low. Usual kitchen safety rules/ washing up apply.

Montage Part two: Secondary characters (or Oaty bars, which is more literal)

I don't know if I've really talked about M's job much - but he's very active, and is often hungry. The quest to make sure he stays warm and has energy is one that I've struggled with, we've tried dried fruit, chocolate bars, bananas, but nothing quite hits the mark and I hate the thought of him being cold and hungry (it's clearly love).

Cereal bars that you can buy often seem to be a miss for us, they taste processed, oily even and I just don't enjoy them. So a couple of weeks back when I caught an old River Cottage I was intrigued by the idea of Hugh's oaty bars. Akin to a thick flapjack, using honey and peanut butter as the base they were chockablock with good things; dried fruit, seeds, nuts. The recipe is one of those that you can take as more of a guideline, and over the last couple of weeks I've run with it, taking the rough quantities and interpreting them loosely, depending on what we have in, and M's tastes.

Oaty bars - the Pantry version

125g butter
150g light, soft brown sugar (darker sugar would make your bars more treacley and would work really well with chopped, fudgy dates)
125g crunchy peanut butter - a no sugar one if you can find it, I'm using a Whole Earth
75g of honey (or golden syrup) and 2 teaspoons to drizzle over at the end
Zest of any two citrus fruit you have
200g porridge oats
150g of dried fruit - again go with what you like - we had chopped dates and sultanas last week, plain sultanas this week. Don't forget to soak your sultanas in tea to make them more succulent
150g of mixed seeds - last week we used sesame and pumpkin, this week we used the end of those, pumpkin and linseeds

As long as you don't alter the ratios too much, this is a completely versatile recipe - change it up to suit your tastes. Once you've made it once it would also work perfectly well doing it by eye. I can't say I weighed much this week when I made them *cough*lazycook*cough*

Method

Melt the butter, sugar, peanut butter, citrus zest and honey in a heavy based saucepan over a low heat
Stir in the oats, dried fruit and seeds
Press into either a greased and lined brownie pan (about 20cm square) or if you prefer flatter bars a roasting tin
Cook at 160 degrees for 35-40 minutes
Take out of the oven and leave in the tin to cool completely
Using a sharp knife cut into squares or bars and store in an airtight tin for up to a week.

This is such an easy recipe I wouldn't hesitate to do it with the Guides - in fact we are next week as part of their On Your Marks badge. (Just check for allergies) I'll type this post out as an activity plan.

PS: This post is without pictures because the light is APPALLING this week, and the oaty bars look like mush in every photo I take. What is my life? *overreacts*

Rhubarb, rhubarb: Crumble, crumble

I believed my drama teacher (snaps to Mr Davis) for years when he taught us to mouth "rhubarb rhubarb" to make it look as though we were talking when not the focus of a scene in the school play. And this was someone who took our school plays extremely seriously; I was in Brecht's "Caucasian Chalk Circle" at 13! Never were we subjected to *shudders* "Children's theatre" and his tolerance for my love of musicals was less convincing (although he came to see me in every single one I did) than my turn as about 7 characters in a 6 hander adaptation of "Under Milk Wood." Seven layers of under-dressing, and the payoff? I got to meet Max Bygraves! Oh yes... I had made it! Still, Mr Davis clearly gave me a good grounding in appropriate onstage behaviour, how to 'become' your character, and of course, projection which I make use of daily in my work as a Learning & Development officer. Yup. Score there on the career front Penelope!

But back to the question in hand. Rhubarb. I finally moved house a fortnight ago and am loving the new flat. I'm back in North London (my spiritual home) back Guiding on a regular basis, and am even nearly unpacked. My new flatmate, showed me around the garden (yes, we have a garden! Squee!) and pointed out a rhubarb plant that 'needed' using up before it spoiled. Well in my role as new flatmate, I clearly felt it my duty, to be thrifty, and to demonstrate my skills in the kitchen. So, out of boxes came the Nigella cookware - and I'm sorry but if you don't swoon at the duck egg blue china then you must be either unwell or insane. And that's not an opinion. It's fact. Well, in my world anyway - so it was time for crumble.

As with cookware, I fall the same way with baking recipes, so went back to basics with Nigella and How to Eat. Nigella loves rhubarb (and although I have yet to go as far as her rhubarb vodka) and her recipes, whilst simple really do work with both the flavour and the texture of the fruit. In Domestic Goddess and Feast, she alters her crumble recipe, but I wanted plain and simple so that I could vary it slightly with flavours that I know marry well.

I don't know about you, but crumble was the first thing I learnt to make in Home Economics (same school as the heavenly, influential Mr Davis; teacher from the other end of the spectrum entirely). I remember vividly the excitement of taking in our ingredients (tinned apple? No, I have no idea why either, flour, margarine, sugar) and bringing home our crumbles. Mum was duly impressed, and I was thrilled. I was already able to make flapjacks, and New Zealand biscuits, as well as help Mum with regular dinners, but in my eyes, this was 'proper' cooking. Not just watching and copying, but being TAUGHT technique. It was overrated. Rubbing in is just that, although I find it oddly soothing these days.

Like so much when baking; rubbing in takes me out of that world of office politics, of activity planning, of my disastrous love life and important decisions about whether or not to bid on an Orla Kiely handbag on Ebay (decision yes, some git outbid me at the last second. I'm still bitter). This week has been a struggle for me healthwise, but I managed to sit at the table and rub the butter into the flour. Somewhere along the line in the moves I have lost my vanilla sugar so soft brown sugar was added to this, along with about half a cup of oats. I don't always add oats to crumble, but it adds a lovely texture to the topping. I spread this over the chopped up rhubarb that I had tossed in some sugar and fresh grated ginger. I know I should probably use the stem ginger in syrup but the thought of it makes me feel nauseous. I have no reason for this apart from the gloopiness (it's a word).

Speaking of the rhubarb, I actually picked it! This was exciting. The recipe had called for 750g of trimmed rhubarb and I have to confess that I had no idea how much I would need to pick. No idea at all; some days that Felicity Kendall fantasy just steps further away I just know that she would have known instinctively. *Sigh* Still, it only took three trips to the bottom of the garden to get about the right amount. I chopped the leaves off - I'm still convinced that they're poisonous despite people telling me the opposite. Anyway once I had gathered enough, I chopped the stems up into about 5cm pieces (I say about, because truthfully I have no idea without holding a ruler in my hand how long 5cm is. And I may be retentive, but even I don't chop rhubarb whilst holding a ruler!)

So this is a very long winded way of telling you that the crumble was bloody gorgeous. Of course, only I could make crumble on the hottest week of the year without the foresight to buy icecream to go with, but natural yoghurt made a refreshingly tart addition to the tasty fruit and crumble combo. My proudest moment, at a Guiding meeting the next day, receiving a text from the new flatmate "That crumble is bloody gorgeous" Ladies and Gentlemen, the pantry has reopened, and I am back!